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 CCCCLXXXI (F IV, 13)

TO P. NIGIDIUS FIGULUS (IN EXILE)

(? )

Though I have for some time past been on the look-out as to what I had best write to you, not only does no definite subject occur to me, but even the usual style of letter seems impossible. For of one department and habitual element in those letters, which we used to write in the days of our prosperity, the state of the times has violently deprived us, and fortune has ordained that I should be unable to write or so much as to think of anything of the sort. There only remained a certain gloomy and wretched style of letter, and one suited to the state of the times: that, too, fails me. In it there is bound to be either a promise of some assistance, or some consolation for your sorrow. I had no such promise to give: for, cast down by a similar blow of fortune, I am myself supporting my disasters by the aid of others, and it more frequently occurs to my mind to complain that I am living as I do, than to rejoice that I am alive. For although no signal injury has been inflicted upon me personally apart from others, and although it has never occurred to my mind to wish for anything in such circumstances which Cæsar has not spontaneously offered me, yet nevertheless I am being so worn out with anxieties, that I regard myself as doing wrong in the mere fact of remaining alive. For I have lost not only many very intimate associates whom either death has snatched